


I'll survive (and I'm taking you with me)

by fonulyn



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: :D, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Finland (Country), Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 13:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20818373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fonulyn/pseuds/fonulyn
Summary: Leon was so tired. He certainly wasn't in the mood for a mission somewhere in the backwoods near the Finnish border, but as per usual, he picked himself up and did what he had to do. Thankfully this time, he didn't have to go through it alone.





	I'll survive (and I'm taking you with me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aideryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aideryn/gifts).

> Happy (belated) birthday to the wonderful _wonderful_ Aide! ❤ You’re absolutely great okay, I’d write you things anytime! I hope you’ll get some enjoyment out of this! :3
> 
> Oh, and I set it in Finland because I can 8) No regrets.

Finland definitely wasn’t showing its best qualities: it was raining from the second their plane landed at the tiny Kuusamo airport, and throughout the entire car ride north along the border. The view was entirely different, but somehow Leon kept getting flashbacks to the time he’d been sitting on the backseat of a car back in Spain, and he just hoped that this time things would work out a little less disastrously. 

At least his companions were less hostile, even if of the quiet sort, only speaking with each other in their native language. Finnish sounded rapid and kind of hard to Leon’s ears, but he didn’t really have the energy to focus on that. He would’ve much rather taken a few days to just catch up on all the sleep he’d missed lately, but here he was, thrown into yet another mission before he’d even had the time to recover from the previous one. 

Suddenly there was a warm palm on his thigh, giving it a small squeeze, and it almost made Leon jump before he remembered that for once he wasn’t sent off to remote corners of the Earth alone. He glanced to the side, meeting Chris’ questioning gaze. “You okay?” Chris pitched his voice low, trying to respect Leon’s privacy. Even if they didn’t understand a word their companions were saying, that certainly wasn’t true the other way around. 

“Yeah,” Leon answered and tried to smile, “I’ll live.” He appreciated the concern, even if it might not have seemed like that to an outsider, and he knew that Chris could tell. They knew each other well enough by now. 

Their conversation was cut short when the car came to a halt, finally. Leon wrapped his jacket tighter around himself as he got out, inwardly cursing the neverending rain for the millionth time that day. “Is it always this rainy here in September?” he found himself asking, as he fell in step next to one of the Finns. 

“Not always,” the man – he had introduced himself as Ilmari, but Leon wasn’t entirely sure how to pronounce that still – grinned, obviously not offended in the slightest. “You should come back in February, then it’ll be all snow.” He looked every bit the stereotypical Finn, with his blond hair and beard, and he was even taller than Chris. Apparently he was a border guard, one of the people who had been keeping track of the weird happenings around here. The nametag sewn onto his jacket said Väänänen, and Leon immediately decided he was going to stay on first name basis with the man, there was no way he was trying to say _that_ out loud. 

For a moment Leon thought about how the landscape would look like covered in snow, everything around them beneath a layer of white, and as pretty as it probably would be the accompanying coldness definitely wasn’t something Leon was interested in. “I think I’ll pass,” he answered with a small shrug, even if it gained him a disapproving huff from Chris. It was easy for Chris to disagree, he always ran hot regardless of the surrounding temperature. 

The topic didn’t veer away from casual weather remarks before they finally were led to a small hotel, and into some kind of a conference room, where they were sat down and told the latest updates on the situation. There was nothing much to go on by. People had seen strange animals and footprints that shouldn’t be even real, and there had been at least three mutated carcasses that some random citizens had stumbled across in the forest. There were whispers of a bioweapon laboratory somewhere close to the Russian border, and that was what they were here for. 

It was going to be a quick and easy mission. All they had to do was locate and neutralize a small laboratory, one that was probably ran by two or three Finnish rednecks who just wanted to show off their skills in virology. No biggie. The only reason the Finnish law enforcement couldn’t deal with it themselves – except for the obvious lack of knowledge when it came to BOWs – was the fact that the place was so close to the border it threatened the relations with the eastern neighbor. It was better to have someone impartial to look into it. 

Leon thought he could’ve easily handled this alone, too. So could’ve Chris. But he wasn’t going to complain when they got to spend some time together, even if it was under circumstances like this. Besides, he was still kind of holding out for hope that they could steal away a day or two to just crash at some nice hotel, have some kind of a mini vacation.

All they had to do was to take care of this quickly. How hard could it be, anyway?

*

Of course, everything went straight to hell.

It really was only a couple of rednecks in their laboratory that looked mostly homemade, one of them raving about how his bright future in science had been stolen away from him and he’d been cast aside. Everything went so smoothly that Leon was already congratulating himself on job well done, even though he really, really should’ve known better. 

If _dogs_ could become infected, then why the hell not _bears_.

Except this thing they ran into didn’t even look like a bear anymore, it was more like at least four of them all rolled into one, gigantic and roaring as it charged. The claws were like knives, and Leone had no intention in finding out just how sharp the teeth were. Even with the mass it had it hadn’t lost much of its agility, and running from it wasn’t exactly an option. There was no way either of them could outrun an even regular bear. 

In hindsight, Leon really should’ve expected it when he was thrown through the air. Sometimes it felt like all of these gigantic monsters had made it their life’s mission to throw him around. At least having it happen so often had taught him how to land more or less gracefully, and usually he could avoid the worst of the damage. Vaguely he registered the burst of pain from his wrist when he hit the trunk of the pine tree and fell down onto the ground, but his mind was running so fast he didn’t have the time to dwell on that.

Chris was standing his ground on the other side of the bear, by the sounds of it emptying a clip after clip into the monstrosity and yet barely holding it back. And all Leon could think of was getting to him, helping him, putting that beast down as soon as possible before something disastrous would happen. He sprinted closer, but his boots slipped on the wet leaves that were scattered on the ground, and he ended up down on one knee. 

The first round he fired hit the bear right in the back of its skull, and it roared, flailing around wildly as it tried to see where the attack had come from. Leon ignored the pain slashing up from his wrist and kept firing, zeroed in on the threat in a way that made the rest of the world feel muted and distant. 

There was something odd in the way the bear was thrashing about, how it was just wildly charging into random directions in what looked like an aimless way. There was blood matted all over the patches of fur it still had left, where the flesh wasn’t exposed and mutated, deformed into something that was far from natural. Leon let his weapon fall from his line of sight, his brow creasing as he took in the sight and –

The bear was blind. Somewhere along the way Chris must’ve managed to do that.

Hurriedly Leon heaved himself up from the wet ground, careful not to slip this time as he advanced. He gave the bear as wide a berth as he dared to, while still keeping his gaze on it to anticipate its moves. Apparently he managed to move quietly enough as the bear kept roaring and slashing at air, but if anything it was advancing further away from them. Leon risked a glance at Chris, and what he saw made his blood run cold: Chris was slumped down onto the ground, unmoving and bloody. 

Somehow Leon made it to his side without slipping again, his hands flying to Chris’ neck to check for a pulse the first thing as he got close enough. Almost at the same moment Chris coughed, sluggishly struggling to get up, and Leon had never felt the kind of relief that washed through him at that. Wordlessly he grabbed Chris’ arm, helping him to get up. “The–”

“It can’t see us,” Leon cut Chris off quickly, voice hushed. The bear was partly behind the trees, its movements slowing down, but its roars were still so loud it felt like the ground was shaking beneath them. “How’s your ammo?”

“Empty,” Chris groaned, a little too loudly, his head snapping towards the creature immediately to make sure he hadn’t been heard. “I’ve got nothing. You?”

Leon shook his head. There was no way they could take it down, and they could only hope that it was headed towards empty wilderness rather than somewhere people could get hurt. Leon wasn’t exactly certain where north was, but he was willing to bet that the bear was straggling into the thick empty forest in the direction of the laboratory. It looked so hurt already that it was barely on its feet, every step slower than the previous. Either it was dying, or at the very least about to pass out. 

Besides there really was nothing they could do about it without a single bullet on either of them. Carefully Leon shouldered Chris’ arm, heaving the man up so he could support some of his weight. “We’re retreating,” he hissed out, adrenaline still running through him in waves. 

Chris didn’t argue.

*

They limped through the forest for a while, and it felt like a friggin’ eternity. Darkness had crept upon them so sneakily that it was like one second it was still light out and the next it was pitch black around them with only the stars and the moon casting an eerie glow through the trees. They were so far away from civilization that it felt like the stars could fall off the sky any second with how bright they were.

Their aimless wandering finally ended when they practically walked straight into a wall. There was a small clearing with a little wooden building on it. The hut only had three walls, benches lining each of them, while the fourth one was left entirely open. There was a place for a campfire in front of the open wall, firewood piled neatly inside the building. 

At least it was better than nothing. It would shelter them from the wind, and if it’d start raining they at least had a roof over their heads. Chris fell onto the bench with a thud, leaning back against the wall behind himself, and Leon left him there for long enough to grab a few logs and build a fire. He kept his eyes and ears open, on the off chance that the monster bear was still alive, but there was nothing overly alerting. Of course the entire forest was alive with sounds, each creepier than the one before, but nothing that screamed of a mutated bear coming to gut them alive. 

Maybe there was some part of the bear still left in the creature’s mind and it’d be afraid of the fire. They could always hope. 

As soon as fire was crackling away, flames licking up the logs of wood, Leon dragged himself back to Chris. His wrist was throbbing in pain by now, making him wince every time he moved his hand even in the slightest, but he bit it back in favor of seeing how bad off Chris was. “Where are you hurt?” he asked, voice rough from the lack of use. “Fucking hell, where’s all this blood coming from?”

“Most of it isn’t mine,” Chris answered with a shrug that immediately made him wince. “The bear got my arm.” That much had been obvious, as his sleeve was torn in pieces and there were three neat parallel scratches still oozing blood. Gingerly he was picking on the fabric, some of it stuck on the already drying blood. 

It was awkward, took some serious maneuvering because Leon could only use his left hand and Chris only his right. But together they managed to get the wounds cleaned and the bandage wrapped around Chris’ bicep, though, both of them unfortunately experienced in field bandaging. There wasn’t much else that could be done right now, and they at least were both still in one piece and not actively dying. 

Even though they looked absolutely miserable.

Leon laughed joylessly as he brushed his fingers through Chris’ hair, trying to comb out some of the disgusting mess of blood, dirt and leaves, and whatever else. His heartbeat picked up, fingers shaking as the reality was finally hitting him, his focus faltering. “Fucking hell, Chris,” he muttered, hating how his voice wavered. “For a second there I thought it bashed your skull in.” 

The memory of it alone made him shudder unpleasantly, that moment of panic he’d gone through when he’d seen Chris lying motionless on the ground, covered in blood. Even getting him up a minute later hadn’t entirely melted the icicle that had formed in Leon’s chest, and only slowly he was finally beginning to believe they were alright. At least for now.

“C’mon,” Chris tried to grin up at Leon, but it was kind of a weak attempt, the exhaustion visible in the lines on his face, “you know my skull is thicker than that.” 

It might not have been the best of jokes but it was the attempt that counted. And it was the sheer warmth in his tone that made Leon finally give in and shift closer. Leon slumped next to Chris onto the bench, carefully leaning against him while trying to make sure he wasn’t aggravating either of their injuries. He pressed his face against the side of Chris’ neck for long enough to breathe him in, and although half of what he got was the metallic tang of blood, there was enough of Chris’ familiar scent mixed into it that it made some of the tension seep off him. 

“I’m so tired,” Leon mumbled half-unintelligibly. Sure he was sleepy, tired from being up for over forty-eight hours straight, but it was more than that. It was a bone-deep exhaustion he felt in every molecule of his being, and it was getting harder and harder to fight it off. 

There was a gentle hand on the side of his head, and willingly Leon let Chris tilt his head so that they were looking at each other properly. “I promise you,” Chris said, low and intense, as if he sensed how tired Leon was, just how close to snapping and giving up he was. “It’ll be fine. We’re getting out of here.”

Rationally Leon knew that neither of them could make such promises. The way their lives were, there was bound to be something nasty enough, powerful and clever enough, to take them out eventually. But he also knew neither of them would give up without fighting tooth and nail, without putting their everything into it. So he took the gesture for what it was, allowed it to be like cooling balm on his very soul. 

There was a hint of a smile on Leon’s lips as he shifted, tilted his head again so he could press their temples together. “I’m holding you to that promise,” he whispered, allowing himself to focus on the shared warmth for a moment, shamelessly drawing strength from Chris who was so solid and real right there next to him. “No taking it back now.”

“Trust me, I’m not,” Chris stated firmly, groaning a little as he shifted and it pulled on his injuries. Nevertheless he put his arm around Leon and pulled him a little closer against his side. “I’m not getting eaten by a fucking bear,” he muttered defiantly. 

That startled a laugh out of Leon. He hummed a little, the tension seeping off him and making way for the all-encompassing tiredness. Yet there was something calming about the moment, something that made him even vaguely content. “It might not eat you,” he pointed out, amusement tinged into his voice, “it might just gut you and spill your intestines all over.”

Chris huffed, and even without looking at him Leon knew that he was trying to fight off a smile and failing. “…and how is that better?”

“I didn’t say it was better,” Leon grinned, “just that it’s an option.” Every time he breathed in too deep it hurt, so he tried to slow down, to focus on every inhalation not to overdo it. Things started to get a little fuzzy around the edges, and before he even realized it was happening he fell asleep.

*

For the longest Chris stayed as still as he could, trying not to wake Leon up now that the man had finally fallen asleep and was getting the rest he so direly needed. He’d seen how Leon had been struggling even from the beginning of the mission, and although it wasn’t even close to being the hardest or the longest mission they’d overtaken – quite the opposite – it seemed to have taken a lot out of him.

Logically Chris knew that it wasn’t only the mission. Leon hadn’t had a proper break in ages, it was no wonder he was feeling so frayed and on edge, and silently Chris decided that he’d do something about that if it was the last thing he did. For now he settled for just holding Leon against himself, while staring tiredly into the flames of the campfire. 

It was a testament to how tired Leon was that he didn’t even wake up when Chris shifted and went to add more logs to feed the fire. As soon as he was done he got back to his previous seat, though, as although the fire kept their shelter surprisingly warm it didn’t hurt to have the shared body heat, either. Besides, it was kind of nice. If he focused enough on the closeness and the flames, it almost felt like they were just camping, like he and Claire had done as children. 

The thought of that made him grin amusedly to himself. Leon would absolutely _hate _if they went camping. So Chris made a mental note to suggest to Claire they make that trip happen, one day.

The morning light was already shimmering in the horizon when suddenly there were voices approaching from the distance. Chris shifted and grabbed his gun. Even if it was empty feeling its weight in his hand was comforting, and on the off chance that it was someone with malicious intentions he might be able to use it to bluff. Leon shifted against him, straightening silently, obviously having been woken up by the noise, and they both braced for whatever was to come. 

“Hei tuolla laavussa on joku!” a voice called, footsteps clearly approaching. At least the people weren’t trying to be stealthy at all, but were making it obvious that they were nearing the shelter. 

Another voice joined in, distantly familiar, although neither of them could really place it right now. “Miten helvetissä täällä on näin paljon verta?”

“Toivottavasti ne on vielä hengissä, ei hirveästi huvittais raahata niitä ruumispusseissa pois täältä.”

Then, finally, a tall figure stopped right next to the campfire, the man greeting them in his slightly broken accented English. “Good morning!” Ilmari grinned at them, gesturing for his companions to come closer too. “Would you happen to know anything about that dead gigantic bear two hundred meters from here?”

Relief flooded Chris and he could see the same feeling mirrored on Leon’s face. So the creature had been dying as it had staggered off the previous night. “We’ll tell you everything about it later,” Chris promised, already heaving himself up. He offered a hand for Leon, only to realize he was already standing too, ready to get going. 

“Sure,” Ilmari agreed, eyeing the two of them as if to assess their injuries. “Can you walk? We’ve got a jeep down the hill, if you make it that far.”

“Yeah,” Leon answered immediately, “let’s get going.” As he stepped past Chris he took the moment to gently bump his shoulder with his own, giving him a small, private smile. 

Maybe they still had the time to make that mini-vacation happen, Chris thought to himself, not even trying to hold back the answering smile that split his face into a bright grin. Surely there were things worth seeing around here, even if thus far all they’d gotten was miles and miles of forest. Then again, a room in a nice hotel would already suffice.

Sunlight was glimmering on the morning dew covering the ground, making everything from the past night seem almost unreal. The tiredness was finally taking over, as Chris hadn’t slept all night, and for a second he got stuck staring at the droplets of water. “Chris?” Leon’s voice snapped him back to reality, and quickly Chris shook himself out of whatever reverie he’d fallen into. 

“Yeah, yeah, coming!” Chris set out to catch up with the others, falling in step right next to Leon.

**Author's Note:**

> Also check out [the awesome accompanying artwork](https://www.instagram.com/p/B282es7i7fh/?igshid=y3obt1zw4x0i) by Tatsu! :D


End file.
